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AMD Hardware

AMD Releases Three New Low-Cost CPUs 101

Posted by CmdrTaco from the cheap-at-twice-the-price dept.
WesternActor writes "With its new Fusion APUs coming out in about a month, you wouldn't think AMD would still be tweaking its processor lineup. But it released three new processors today—the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition, the Phenom II X2 565 Black Edition, and the Athlon II X3 455—to balance out its price-performance offerings. The Black Edition CPUs with their unlocked multipliers are probably the most interesting, particularly the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition which has six cores, runs at 3.3 GHz, and costs only $265. As the name implies, the 1100T represents only a minute increase in clock speed over the 1090T. It even has the same amount of L2 and L3 cache (3MB and 6MB, respectively), is based on the same 45nm production process, and is designed for the currently standard AM3 socket. Given that 1090T got the downward nudge in price to $235, however, the 1100T offers slightly better performance for less money."
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AMD Releases Three New Low-Cost CPUs More

AMD Releases Three New Low-Cost CPUs

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  • Low cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jewelises ( 739285 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:21PM (#34481128)
    I've heard of marketers redefining price points, but this is ridiculous. I've never paid more than $150 for a processor.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Have you even looked at Intel's price-points? You wouldn't be saying these things if you had.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by blair1q ( 305137 )

        Both Intel and AMD have a wide range of price points. At least in the low to mid-range. Intel has a swath of parts that cost a lot more than any AMD parts, but they also perform a lot better than anything else in existence.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Intel's low-end parts tend are typically lower performing (or higher priced, depending on how you look at it) than the AMD counterparts, I thik you pay a minimum just for the brand. In the performance ranges AMD can't touch you get far better performance, but at an ugly price premium. Personally I've found that Intel is competing most intensly around AMD's high-end where AMD starts to cheat a little and Intel wants to "cut off" AMD. Intel is of course trying to choke the chips that give AMD good margins, wh

          • amd has better chipset choices and lower MB prices (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @07:24PM (#34481756)

            amd has better chipset choices and lower MB prices

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by blair1q ( 305137 )

              All AMD stuff tends to be cheaper. For the same reason their chips tend to be cheaper. Not because they cost less to make, but because undercutting significantly on price is the only way they can compete.

              And Intel's chipsets are in many ways superior these days. This isn't 2004.

          • Used to be that the choice for me was a financial one in that I could achieve the same processing power on the high end but did I want to pay more for the Intel name. Actually, for awhile, I considered AMD the best choice and recommended it to many and chose it for myself. Now though, I want the performance edge that Intel has. And I'll pay more for it. Of course, the balance between the two sway back and forth and right now Intel is on top. Maybe not tomorrow....

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by blair1q ( 305137 )

              AMD actually was better, both in performance and performance/price, and especially performance/power.

              Intel tried to pull away from x86 and it cost them dearly. But they got back in the game and now those AMD superiorities are distant memories.

      • i7 > 275$
        i5 760 quad core can be had for 200$.
        i3 150$

        So there you go. High end. Mid Range. Low end.

        240-270$ isn't exactly low cost. AMD or Intel.

    • Re:Low cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hedwards ( 940851 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:26PM (#34481160)
      As the other poster suggested, you can buy an entire AMD based system for what one of Intel's high end processors costs. There are people who want that level of performance and are willing to pay, but the chip does cost a lot.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @08:35PM (#34482298)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by devent ( 1627873 )

          Future proof? I'm still using my 3 years "old" laptop and I'm perfectly fine with it. I think I will be using it in another 3 or 10 years if the hardware will not fail me.

          Actually, I'm really don't know why I need such a power monster, all my applications run perfectly fine on my T61p.

          But of course I have work to do and not play all day long Crysis.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • $100 or $150 may be low cost...$265? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kcbnac ( 854015 ) <kcbnac @ g m a il.com> on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:26PM (#34481166)

      I know! My general rule is $100 - I don't buy the Phenoms or other "high-end" models. Last time went with the 2.8GHz quad (Athlon II X4 630)

      I could picture buying the same as a Phenom if the L3 cache would make a big difference for what I ran, but it doesn't make enough of a difference when gaming to be worth the cost.

      I also love how both articles are from PCMag and nothing linking to AMD directly.

      • 265$ is more than I have spent on an entire system in the last ten years.

        • Its easy to go cheapo when you dont have to count the cost of the monitor, hard drive, or operating system.

          For most people, those 3 alone (18" panel, 250GB HD, Windows) will run them almost $265.

          It is much harder to justify skimping on the CPU/RAM when you are starting at $265.

          I get you though.. I build my father a nice (for his needs) salvage-system for $150 when his mobo fried.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I just purchased a Phenom X4 2.8GHz + ASUS mobo (not high end but with good features - core unlocking, easy overclocking, Crossfire support, USB 3 - and it is usually $100 on Newegg) for $160. If you time deals right, you can get the higher end stuff for the same price as the lower end stuff (not that there's too much of a difference for most people between Athlons and Phenoms).

    • My first thoughts also. 240-270$ isn't low cost at all. My last one was 150$ also (though now I am wishing I ponied up the extra 40-50$ bucks). I still wouldn't go north of 200$ before taxes on a CPU.

  • 1090T (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cosm ( 1072588 ) <thecosm3@gmai l . c om> on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:25PM (#34481158)
    I have a 1090T in my main home/dev machine. It is excellent. Gaming, video encoding, whatever. Combined with a boot SSD and 6GB of DDR3, couldn't be happier with the system. Beats the hell out of a standard consumer box, and for the $300 I paid for the 1090, it spanks Intel's offerings (at least did at the time, probably still does). I will say though that consumer boxes are catching up pretty quickly, and their price/performance seems to have plummeted enough to compete with independent system builders (still don't get the feel good feeling).

    If your building a new box with an X6, make sure the BIOS supports 'em. When I bought mine along with a new motherboard, I didn't check, turned out it only supported quads out of the box. I was in such a rush to see the CPU in action, I went to best-buy, bought a machine that had an X4, put the X4 in my new board so I could flash the board to support X6, and then swapped the CPUs back out. Desperate geek times call for desperate geek measures.

    Note: I didn't return the X4 Best Buy machine, but was seriously tempted to :)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      It spanked nothing. It may have been a nudge better in performance at the same price, or $3-5 less for the same performance, but Intel gets a little juice from its brand recognition and power and reliability numbers.

      In those segments where Intel and AMD compete, Intel can make better ASPs than AMD, and manufactures the goods for cheaper per unit. That's why AMD is still dinky and Intel is a behemoth. In those segments where AMD and Intel don't compete head-to-head, you find Intel parts and no AMD parts.

      • Thats funny because (A) I have had no trouble getting motherboards that support 6-core AMD's out of the box, (B) Flashing the bios is painless these days unless you are using some shitty assed brand of motherboard, and (C) AMD clearly wins the price/performance competition [cpubenchmark.net] with all of the top-20 being AMD.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Eugene ( 6671 )

        at least for AMD you can use your old motherboard, with Intel you need new motherboard everytime...

    • Computers are my hobby. I did voluntary work for United Devices and now do work for World Community Grid. I have been doing this for over 10 years. I am in the top one tenth of one per cent of the World Community Grid(515th position with more than 515,000 members) Three years ago I purchased a q6600 quad computer hoping to get 3 or 4 times as many results. I was surprised when I got 6 times as many results as a similar speed rated single core computer. I recently purchased a 1090t 6 core bare bones co

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rev0lt ( 1950662 )
        Yah, but if you are worried with electric bills you should try the 32nm processors.. You get 4 cores / 8 threads at half the 6600 consumption.

  • Fusion Auxillary Power Units? Wow!

    Oh. Overloaded initialism. Damn. Carry on.

  • X6 Black is awesome, hopefully (Score:3)

    by Stregano ( 1285764 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:29PM (#34481202)
    I actually bit the bullet when they X3 Black came out. I got it later on in the cycle, and it was a true tri-core and no unlocking of the 4th core. As for price, I paid $200 for it back then. A six core for $200 and I will bite again. I like to buy stuff right when it is on the brink of not being new anymore. That is the fun of pc parts though, it all depends on what you do with your PC. If you are into gaming and most of the games do not support 6 cores, then it is bragging rights only. I promise you in 6 months that $235 price tag will be much lower than $235. I personally do alot with video processing and 3-D animation, so I could use some more cores.

    • A six core for $200 and I will bite again.

      AMD's first Phenom II 6-core (the 1055T) was $200 when released (they are now $180 on newegg.) Thats a 2.8 ghz with locked multiplier (still highly overclockable, but the bus has to follow)

      MSI motherboards auto-over-clock feature (capped at 20%) has brought several (all, I've built 3 1055T systems) of these up to 3.36 ghz without changing the voltage for me, and when AMD Turbo is being used by the CPU it brings 3 cores up to 4ghz (and down-clocks 3 cores.)

      All of them have been stable with Prime95.

      The

  • Math? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    the ... 1100T ... costs only $265... The 1090T [costs] $235 ... the 1100T [costs] less money.

    Wait, $265 is less than $235?

  • From TFS:

    1090T = $235
    1100T = $265

    "Given that 1090T got the downward nudge in price to $235, however, the 1100T offers slightly better performance for less money."

    Could someone explain the math to me? It seems to me that $265 is more money than $235, but this is probably just advanced math.

    • The 1090T was running $280 when first released ... so this one at $265 gives you more for your money.. I guess that sort of contrived logic explains it.

    • Re:Funny math. (Score:5, Funny)

      by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @07:14PM (#34481668) Journal

      From TFS:

      1090T = $235
      1100T = $265

      "Given that 1090T got the downward nudge in price to $235, however, the 1100T offers slightly better performance for less money."

      Could someone explain the math to me? It seems to me that $265 is more money than $235, but this is probably just advanced math.

      After you bought the 1100T you have slightly better performance, but also have less money.

  • Problem is.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @06:52PM (#34481466) Homepage

    AMD's 6 Core stuff underperforms the same clock frequency i7 quad core by enough that real power users dont choose AMD right now.

    What I want is both Intel and AMD to drop the BS of "special SMP processors that require all special and expensive stuff.

    3.1ghz 6 core processor X2 on a workstation motherboard using normal ram instead of the craptastic Opterons and the overpriced ECC ram coupled with anal rape priced motherboards.

    • Re:Problem is.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hedwards ( 940851 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @07:00PM (#34481558)
      Depending upon your definition of power user, that's almost always been the case. I remember there was that brief period when AMD beat Intel to the 1ghz mark, but apart from that the high end stuff from Intel has typically been faster.

      But it's also pretty much always been crazy expensive as well. Most people make their decisions either on marketing or the price/performance ratio. I suppose some people now consider energy efficiency as well.

      • Re:Problem is.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @07:09PM (#34481642)
        Dont forget the new breed of folks that build systems based on how quiet they will be. Thats sort of similar to the energy efficiency group, but not quite the same.

        Its actually quite impressive what can be done with just some decent fanless heatsinks.

        Then there are those sick bastards that submerge their computer in mineral oil...

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Quiet is nice, but lately I've gone for size (well actually they're both related). MicroATX is damned nice, and miniITX is increasingly appealing. It's great having a top-end gaming PC you can pick up with one hand and carry around with no effort.

          I've been eying this case [newegg.com] for some time. Must resist... urge.

        • Then there are those sick bastards that submerge their computer in mineral oil...

          Real mean use fluorinert.

      • When AMD first released the Opteron and x86-64, they beat the pants off Intel, especially in SMP because they had Hybertransport versus Intel's rather dated FSB, not to mention the Netburst architecture which failed to scale to 20GHz.

        Also, the 6100's currently get more FLOPS/socket than Intel, provided your workload can scale from 32 to 48 cores for a 4 socket motherboard. AMD also win on Flops/$, again assuming reasonable scaling.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        If you'd been paying attention to prices recently ECC unreg 1333 is actually in some cases cheaper than regular DDR3 1333.

        While it doesn't help for people wanting 1600/2000+ speed memory, ECC is definitely not at the premium prices it once was. And while not everyone needs it (Esp if your computer gets shut down at the end of teh day and booted again in the morning), for those of us who have system updates listing into the 'years' category, ECC makes a huge difference for ensuring that system is still runni

      • AMD did have the lead once upon a time. Basically they had processors that ran on PAR with Intel (even thumped them in many benchmarks), but sold cheaper. Then Intel came out with the Core 2 Duo and on a smaller die fab than AMD could muster. AMD has never been able to catch up since. About the ONLY thing that makes AMD even slightly attractive is that currently the Intel spec motherboards are still a bit pricier than AMD's offerings. However that difference has been dropping over time, and AMD hasn't made

      • Depending upon your definition of power user, that's almost always been the case. I remember there was that brief period when AMD beat Intel to the 1ghz mark, but apart from that the high end stuff from Intel has typically been faster.

        AMD was faster from when Athlon 64 was launched (December 2003) to when Core 2 was released (July 2006). But even today AMD is just about at parity with Core 2, and Intel is about to launch Sandy Bridge. Hopefully Bulldozer can change that.

    • errr whut? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by isopropanol ( 1936936 )
      Hmmm... AMD 1090T $279.98 CDN, ... Intel i7 960 $651.98 CDN, .... The $372 difference can buy a whopping GPU, Stack of RAM, or SSD (or contribute to all 3), which will probably make a bigger difference anyways, depending on workload. (Prices from NCIX.com, I am not affiliated with them)

    • AMD's 6 Core stuff underperforms the same clock frequency i7 quad core by enough that real power users dont choose AMD right now.

      For values of 'power user' that don't include low-end high-volume virtualization where core-count is paramount. AMD's 12-core part is nice too (I use it on 'real' servers), but spendy per-core. Getting 6 or 12 cores in an Intel box is far more expensive.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drsmithy ( 35869 )

        For values of 'power user' that don't include low-end high-volume virtualization where core-count is paramount.

        When it comes to virtualisation, RAM is nearly always more important than either core count or speed, unless you're doing something unusual.

        • When it comes to virtualisation, RAM is nearly always more important than either core count or speed, unless you're doing something unusual.

          And when you buy a cheaper multicore processor from AMD, you can spend the difference on more RAM! :)

        • Such as what GP is doing, apparently.

          Many commercial virtualization shops standardize on one VM per core.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drsmithy ( 35869 )

            Such as what GP is doing, apparently.

            Well he didn't mention doing anything unusual.

            Most people grossly overestimate the overheads of virtualisation, and thus believe they need a lot more CPU than they actually do. Typically, CPU is the _last_ resource you run out of when virtualising.

            Many commercial virtualization shops standardize on one VM per core.

            Like who ? That seems incredibly low to the point of nearly making it uneconomical. We're averaging about 20 VMs on each of our 8-core/16-thread/48GB

        • When it comes to virtualisation, RAM is nearly always more important than either core count or speed, unless you're doing something unusual.

          Obviously it depends on your workload. Any job that will benefit from CPU cache coherency will appreciate dedicated cores. Something as simple as MySQL replication benefits handsomely. Any kind of compute farm or compile cluster will demand it. If you're doing filesharing and terminal apps, it's definitely overkill.

          Also, remember that we need to have ECC RAM for ser

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      [Brand x] underperforms the same clock frequency [Brand y]

      Who compares by clock frequency? It's all about dollars vs dollars, watts vs watts, or some mixture thereof.

  • get a core for free (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    x3 + core unlocker = win

  • Nice (Score:3)

    by interval1066 ( 668936 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2010 @07:03PM (#34481596) Journal
    6 cores for $235??? AND at 3.3G? Sign me up.
  • let's check Wikileaks to see if there's a good review by the state department.

  • Man, already?! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by John Pfeiffer ( 454131 )

    Argh! They knocked down the price? I just bought a 1090T last month... Oh well, par for the course. The whole sequence of events was just FRAUGHT with BS. :(

    The motherboard in my primary computer shit itself suddenly and for no apparent reason, and I had to RMA it. This took three weeks for some god-unknown reason considering they didn't 'repair' anything, but instead sent me a different board with a new s/n sticker on it with my serial.

    I finally get the motherboard back only to DROP THE GODDAMN CPU DURIN

    • Never buy cheap motherboards. My rule of thumb is two-fold.

      First, the cost of MoBo should never be cheaper than the RAM that is going onto it. Yes this means that all those sub-$100 MoBo's are out of the question if you are going 6+ GB DDR3.

      Secondly, for its SATA and USB feature set, it should not be within 20% of the cheapest board you can find with that same feature set, and never the cheapest of that feature set from that specific manufacturer.

      The first part is more common-sense than anything else,
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I don't intend for it to be a permanent solution, it's just literally all the money I had at the time.

        Though it does seem to be a perfectly fine board, so I'll definitely put it to use somewhere. Come tax rebate time, I fully expect to get a new mobo and plenty of memory. :D

      • Never buy cheap motherboards. My rule of thumb is two-fold.

        And more importantly, never buy a cheap PSU.

        (Having a voltage stabilized UPS unit helps as well, but the APC Smart-UPS aren't cheap and replacing the battery every 3 years sets you back $30-$60/yr depending on size.)

      • Your rule of thumb doesn't seem to include anything besides gut feeling.

        As a counter-anecdote, I've never paid more than $50 for a motherboard, and I upgrade about every 3 years. It's worked out well for me. Just insist on solid caps, and after that it's just a feature comparison.

  • I was hoping we'd see a 95W X6 available retail sometime soon. I want to build a mini-itx 6-core box, but these are typically limited to 95W parts. There is a 95W X6 manufactured, but it is not available retail (only to OEMS from what I understand).

  • Someday I will be able to buy it....

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